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I am a small developer on iOS and the App Store Search ads are super frustrating. When users search for my exact app name, apple shoves 2 full screen ads on top of the search results. Sometimes, it's 1 search results sandwiched in between 2 ads which makes the user miss it because they scrolled past the ads.
Often these ads are entirely unrelated to what user is searching for. And small developers are being discouraged when big companies are spending millions in ads to rank above them.
Also, most of the times, the ads are for apps I will never download. I constantly see ads for the Temu app which I will never use. Yet, there's no "don't show this ad again" button.
It's worse than that. App names must be unique, but if you search for the exact (unique!) name, the exact hit isn't even rated on top! I have the app "Bit" on the app store and you have to do quite a bit of scrolling, even if you don't count the ads.
Same problem here too. I have a game called "Unscramble!" and it's impossible to find it with that name. I have scrolled for many pages and can't find it. Meanwhile, many very old apps which haven't been updated in many years are showing in the results.
when i am looking for a specific app on the App Store, I never use the app store to search. I search the web and look for a link to it on the app store. Mostly it's faster that way.
I've always found it crazy that if you search for a brand name / trademarked name that it's legal for the search provider to shove a bunch of vaguely related shit above the results unless that brand pays for ad placement to be the top result. Sure, fine, put whatever ad pays the most at the top of the search for "best iOS game" - but when someone searches "Wordle" - that you can't rely on Wordle being the top result is a indictment of the whole ad-supported internet. (Sub 'Claude' or 'Discord' or whatever other search term and it's the same issue)
As a user this also drives me crazy. I want SERACH RESULTS not a fucking full screen ad or maybe even TWO screens worth. Absolutely shit.
I have been a long time Android fan because of the tinkering you could do more easily than Apple. Then I started appreciating some of the design decisions behind especially iPhone, and it's been almost 7 years of iPhone usage.
Recently I am starting to question some of the design decisions. Most native apps are bloated with functionalities, most of the time useless. Ads pop up everywhere, even before persistence; iCloud and backups are clearly designed to make you pay, the free space is useless.
I am not that sure my next phone will be an iPhone.
I have tried a recent Mac, and the system isn't intuitive at all. The first time I used GNOME, it was a breeze. Not the same with the MacBook system.
You mean it's not the same as Windows. I personally find Windows infuriating after having been a mac user for decades even though I started out on windows way back in the win3.1->win2k era. It's just different.
They are both infuriating, as a long-time user of both.
yeah it took me years to get used to the nuances of MacOS after growing up with windows. Both are fine.
My first guess would be Linux. Although maybe they used Gnome as a one-off, liked it, and then switched to Windows for some reason.
I like macOS but we should be honest about some of its basic functionality being unintuitive. The “traffic lights” were pretty confusing to me for a while. Green button made the window grow but not fully maximize - I never understood the point of that (though, nowadays it goes fullscreen, which is great). Yellow minimizes, fine, whatever. Red appears to quit, but actually doesn’t, it merely closes the window, which is confusing for the simple case of only having one window. And the analogy of traffic lights doesn’t really work.
The classic one that everyone talks about is the weird way apps are installed by dragging an app into a folder, signified only by an arrow, with no explanation of what it’s doing or why. Also, that UI wouldn’t always show up, I believe because the app itself has to be coded to trigger it. So sometimes I would end up with an app running without having been installed. Therefor some of my apps wouldn’t show up in Launchpad, etc. Now that I understand the process, it’s pretty cool. And it’s simple, in a sense. But it fails any definition of intuitive.
The scroll direction of a mousewheel cannot be controlled independently from a trackpad. So one or the other is bound to feel wrong to most people.
There are simple things Apple could change to fix most of these, but I think it’s overlooked just because “that’s how it’s always been”.
I wonder why they decided to go with traffic lights. It doesn’t really map at all to the things you want to express on a desktop OS. Yellow=hide car but leave it running, and red=… destroy car?
The funny thing is, it could almost work on something like iOS, where (if I understand correctly) focusing away from an app suspends it typically. So that could be the red button. I’m not sure what yellow should be. Maybe put the app into a sort of non-interactive mode where it stays on the screen but doesn’t do any processing, just queues up notifications.
Red = stop (close)
Yellow = yield (minimize)
Green = go (grow)
Makes sense to me.
It makes sense to me as well, but mostly because I’m familiar with the UI in-and-of-itself. This is a website for computer programmers mostly, we’re exactly the wrong people to ask if a UI is intuitive.
OTOH among the non-technical people I know they’ve haven’t often complained about this sort of thing, so maybe the real answer is just that this is something where not much explanation is needed in the first place!
It’s supposed to grow to the size it needs to fit the content. That button was never a “maximise” but a “zoom” (you can confirm this by checking the “Window” menu in an app).
It depends. The general rule is that for apps which can only ever have one window (e.g. System Settings), closing the window quits the app. For apps with multiple windows, closing the window only closes the window.
We (the users) are the ones who call them traffic lights, though. As far as I’m aware, Apple hasn’t suggested that as an analogy.
The old behaviour is still there, if you ⌥+click.
The insight there is that (most) apps aren’t really “installed”. You can grab that file (actually it’s a folder, a package bundle) and put it and run it from anywhere.
Unless I’m misunderstanding you, that UI is part of the DMG. If an app is distributed as a zip, for example, you won’t see it.
But it’s not. You yourself listed an example where it changed (zoom/maximise). Installing apps with PKG files used to be more common. The scroll direction thing isn’t that old, it was only some time after iPhones that trackpads changed the default motion.
Yeah, macOS is in a difficult position because some paradigms it's just had forever, and changing them would be unintuitive to established users even though they're not intuitive for a newcomer.
For me, I always felt like the dragging an app into a folder is pretty intuitive. I feel like it follows the unix "everything is a file" philosophy; installing is just putting the app file somewhere on your computer.
But everything else I pretty much agree with you.
All of those quirks would be intuitive to a mac user, but to the parent's point, they are unintuitive because it works differently from Windows. Before the green traffic light went full screen it was Zoom, not maximize. It fit the window to the content, the logic being why would you cover a huge display with white space just to read an 800px wide document. Fullscreen breaks long time macOS behavior, throwing that window over to its own space and breaks the desktop centric design.
Likewise with the red traffic light. Windows couples process lifecycle to the window lifecycle. macOS separates process from the presentation, the paradigm is a desk full of papers, and so documents are separate from their application, the app remains ready to open another file when you close that specific document.
I'll give you app installation via drag and drop, if the background image of the .dmg doesn't have that arrow queue then you're right, it's pretty unintuitive but even then, the idea is you don't have to install an app on macOS. They are just bundles, you run them from anywhere. Dragging and dropping into /Applications is totally optional.
Windows has its fair share of unintuitive behavior/arbitrary quirks too that's overlooked because "that's how it's always been." What's intuitive or not still just comes down to muscle memory.
My biggest gripe with windows is it will steal your cursor focus from password prompts. And when it surfaces a password prompt, it does not focus it automatically.
I accidentally sent my password in a Teams chat at work because an Auth prompt popped up so I naturally typed my password and hit enter like I would on a Mac.
Hilarious. But bad UX.
I love MacOS and it’s my primary OS and I couldn’t agree with you more on every single one of your points.
They have not had any innovation in desktop UI since 2005.
I have an iMac G5 running Tiger and the desktop environment is almost identical in every way. Except now it doesn’t look pretty like it did in the Aqua days.
I remember Tiger. Leopard was such a huge upgrade for it. I mean spaces alone, come on, that was huge. All the trackpad gesture control came after Tiger too with the larger unibody trackpads.
The keyboard shortcuts are way more inconsistent on Mac. On Windows and KDE (and I presume Gnome though my experience is very out of date), Ctrl shortcuts pretty consistently relate to the window that currently has focus, and Meta/Windows shortcuts relate to manipulating and navigating windows as entities. No such rule of thumb exists in Mac.
The simplest example of that to me is Cmd+T to open a new tab, Ctrl+Tab/PgUp/Dn to cycle through tabs, whereas it's Ctrl for all of them on KDE or Windows. There simply is not a way to deterministically switch to a specific other program/window, where in Windows/KDE you can do Win+1 to move to the first program on the taskbar (and so on with other numbers). And the behavior of Home/End is very inconsistent between programs, with seemingly no consistent way to move the cursor to the beginning of the current line.
Does ctrl+a not work for you? ctrl+a and ctrl+e work for me across every app I use on my Mac.
It seems it does. Thank you.
That is a very strange keyboard shortcut when the home and end keys exist though.
Edit: It seems that Ctrl+A actually moves back to just after the most recent newline. That is not the same thing as moving back to the start of the line.
These keyboard shortcuts are also used in emacs; I'm not sure if that's the source of their inclusion in MacOS or if they have a common ancestor between them.
What's the difference between "just after the most recent newline" and the start of the line?
The difference is when the current paragraph of text has line wrapped. Home on Windows goes back to the start of the current line, Ctrl+A on Mac goes back to the start of the current paragraph.
Keyboard shortcuts on Mac are a lot more consistent than windows and Linux actually. On a Mac command + C / V is copy / paste. In Linux sometimes it’s control + c, sometimes it’s control + shift + c.
I guess what I mean to say is that there's no consistent paradigm for keyboard shortcuts. It's a lot more memorization and less real pattern to what keyboard shortcut will do what action.
And the only time I've encountered where it's not Ctrl+C in Linux is in the terminal. That feels like a reasonable exception to be grandfathered in, given it predates desktop environments. I will definitely grant that being able to Cmd+C/V in terminals is pleasant though.
You can set shortcuts to whatever you like on mac though
I have used a lot of systems, and inside them a lot of programs (I make design choices for a living, even if they are at a lower level, UX and intuitiveness exists also in libraries). I was comparing Mac OS to GNOME and not to Windows because Windows is almost the same as Mac OS relative to my point, just worse.
It being different is a fair point, and when designing a system you always make tradeoffs; what I feel is that Apple tradeoffs and design goals are slowly turning more toward additional monetization after you buy the product than focusing on the product per se.
Yeah, I feel that in my bones. They've started down this road, and I don't know they'll be able to turn back.
I followed the same progression and am also now contemplating going back to Android with my next phone. Cramming ads in Wallet, the way ads pop-in in YouTube, and the overall clumsiness of Liquid Glass have me really questioning whether the "just works" aspect of Apple's first-party cross-compatibility is worth it.
Same here, I’ve gone from Apple fanboy to slowly dropping all of my Apple products as it becomes time for new purchases. They are just no longer looking at users like me. They keep focusing their efforts on things I don’t care about, while locking me out of control over my system more and more each macOS release. That and the fact that Apple and their third party application ecosystem abandons computers when they become a few years old… why bother fighting that?
The only thing in the Apple world I’ve become hopelessly dependent on is iMessage. It’s going to be painful to leave all those group chats. Everything else I use has a great Linux replacement.
2026 is finally going to be the Year Of The Linux Desktop for this former Apple user.
Say what you will about Apple (I loathe so much about my work macbook), but this seem untrue unless you have a pretty loose definition for "a few". My inherited 7 year old iPad is still getting updates, and this year's Mac OS is the first to not support Intel hardware, the most recent hardware being 6 years old.
The last Intel Mac was actually just 3 years ago!
The last 20 years we've only seen Apple enjoying the good times. What they did when the money was gushing in from every angle is not really an indicator of what they'll do in the hard times. We're getting into the hard times now, IAP revenue is plummeting because of competition for payments and a whole bag of things are impacting consumer purchase behavior.
This has resulted in positive outcomes like services have largely gone global this last quarter but it's also resulted in negatives like more ads and service price increases in many countries.
Yes they do offer security updates for what, 7 years? That I consider “kind of ok.” Not great. And yes most Android phones are even worse than that. But OS and application updates? You’re dead to them after 4 or 5 years. AND the whole ecosystem follows suit, so if your Mac is like 6 years old, almost nobody is writing software that works on your system anymore.
There are a few projects that let you access iMessage on non-Apple devices. I've been using https://github.com/lrhodin/corten-matrix to relay iMessage to Matrix, and there's also https://openbubbles.app/ for something that runs solely on an Android phone.
Thanks, I’ll look into both of these.
I’ve managed to move all of my inner circle family and friends to Signal. We always had one holdout android user and now we don’t care that he’s on android. As a bonus, because I’m on a computer much of the day, I can use a keyboard to send signal messages.
There’s one non-tech sister in law who won’t install signal (but is somehow ok with Snapchat) so she’s just not included on the group chats.
Thank you for your comment. We’ve charged F1: The Movie to your default card.
I am still rocking my M1 MacBook Air and performance-wise I have no complaints. Even doing heavy workload, it manages surprisingly well.
What I don't like is the direction MacOS is heading to. In my opinion, it always catered to the "casual" people UX-wise, but somehow I feel more and more that I, as a developer am just an afterthought.
On the other hand, I replaced Windows on my gaming PC and I keep thinking about buying a Laptop for Linux. I always had a sweet spot for KDE, but the amount of configuration it allows, while having nice defaults is such a nice experience after the Mac...
I feel like Apple is always pushing the dev side forward in pretty awesome but small ways.
I’m super excited for containers. Yes they exist without Apple recreating them, but built in container runtime for the OS is developer forward thinking
One step forward two steps back. Containers are cute. Used to be able to boot into another OS entirely just a few years ago.
Ah, but see, I'm rocking a vanilla Ubuntu install on a vanilla[1] Raptor Lake Dell I got used on eBay last summer for $220, and I too have no complaints.
"No complaints" is a great way to celebrate worthwhile hardware's value in the age of consumerism. It's death to a business who needs to sell stuff to survive. That M1 Air isn't booking revenue, and to be blunt Apple would have preferred its lifespan to be lower.
[1] Still has 16G though for VM and docker tinkering, something that is hard to get on Apple hardware without springing for a MBP.
I highly recommend Asahi Linux. It runs pretty well on MacBooks with the M1 chip.
Unless you want to use external monitors
HDMI out works great on M1 and M2 chips, and DP alt mode output is nearly ready, and works if you compile an experimental kernel. I daily drive an Asahi Linux ALARM M1 Pro macbook, and I have almost zero complaints.
Does the experimental kernel finally support connecting to a Studio Display?
Yes, it does work with Fairydust, but you do need to use a USB-C cable in place of the included thunderbolt cable at the moment.
Hell yeah. I’ll be giving that a shot again this weekend.
I got tired of having to haul a separate HDMI display out for Asahi use.
There's the experimental Fairydust Branch which lets you connect a monitor via USB-C. However if you want to use more than one external monitor DisplayLink is currently the only option that works reasonably well. Unless you have a Mac with an HDMI port in which case you can use it.
There's work being done on that front: https://www.reddit.com/r/AsahiLinux/comments/1w2e946/thunder...
IPhone users switching to android due to enshitification and android users switching to iPhone due to the locking down of third-party apps and if you're forced into a walled garden might as well go to brushed aluminum one.
Basically everyone is getting shafted.
Agreed, I swapped to iPhone about 4 years ago, because I couldn't find a phone for myself from a tons of options(one company did that, another did something else, etc..).
iPhone is nice, but it has its quirks and stupidities. Android is nice, but has some other stuff I don't like.
I wish there would be a third option that would take the best of those two worlds.
I honestly miss my Windows Phone, solid performance and battery life. The platform was never big enough for there to be much issue with third party apps and I could write what ever software I wanted and load it onto the phone without too much pain.
I’m almost in the market for a new phone and I wish there were more options than Android/iPhone. I’m looking at maybe going for a GrapheneOS phone of some sort though
Wasn't Google ordered by courts to low third party app stores? So more freedom?
I'm the opposite. I started as a die hard iPhone fan, eventually switched to Android and never looked back. My wife has an iPhone and every time I use her phone I find myself wondering wtf their UX designers are thinking.
Me too. Android for the most part has much better UI.
The rotation thingy alone infuriates me on iPhones. The Android implementation is perfect.
Android keyboards are in a different class from iOS. And I use a source available privacy respecting one.
VPNs work much better on Android.
Settings is laid out better.
Haptics are used much more which I appreciate.
lack of back button is a crime.
can't customize home screen launcher.
clock alarms often doesn't work
I like Vanadium (Chromium) a lot more than Safari. Everything is so well thought out. For example, on iOS, the open in new tab brings you to that tab so if you want to open a bunch, you have to go back to the tab you're branching off of. On Chromium, it works like on desktop.
default apps arent as well implemented as android. Can't change a lot of them which seems anti-competitive. I'm talking about picking which apps open and stuff like messaging app, not the default apps that come with the OS's quality. Apple might get a win there. Apple notes is awesome.
The Android password manager integration is much better at autofilling and detection.
I prefer iOS UX wise but I agree with you on keyboards, settings, alarms
Edit: and rotation
I have no loyalty, I've switched back and forth several times. I haven't concluded that either is better than the other, just different (and these days, not really -that- different). Though I do appreciate the tight integration between the iPhone and my MBP, that is definitely a sticky feature.
right now I have the same feeling; some time ago I felt that entering the iPhone "mindset" made sense as you could gain in ease of use by sacrificing some "control".
Well even if you think the iPhone UX is great, they'll change it for no reason in the next release.
Wild take. I use both and iOS (other than settings menu which is absolute garbage) makes much more sensible design decisions than Google. And even Androids good design decisions are just variations on things they took from iOS. OG android was better. Now they’re just trying to be iOS+
Same here. Owned every initial iPhone but went to Pixel a little while back and it's a much better experience.
With that said, something Apple does very well is the ecosystem integration between devices across form factors. I miss that, but not enough to switch my phone back.
I am starting to believe that Apple got rid of any UX talent they had, replaced them with interns and spent the saved $ on marketing.
I guess it depends on what you're used to? The last time I tried using GNOME, I found it very unintuitive. I ran into stuff like:
- Why don't windows have maximize and minimize buttons?
- Why do I have to go to a separate screen to un-minimize a window?
- Why does launching software require going through the GNOME equivalent of the Windows 8 start screen?
- Why can't I make the trackpad scroll speed slower?
- Why don't I have any system tray icons?
- Why do the extensions I installed to work around some of the above problems (some of which have millions of downloads yet haven't been added as settings) break after every GNOME update?
- Why do I need a damn extension for everything in Gnome?
this is a fair point. I am referring to more "objective" things, if anything can be, in design. Let's take as an example the alt+tab behaviour with multiple virtual desktops. In GNOME, as it is in Windows too by the way, alt+tab cycles inside the virtual desktop you're in, allowing for efficient matrix-like navigation, and allowing to split tasks between desktops. On Mac OS, alt+tab cycles on all your open programs, making you jump between desktops. To me, this is rather unintuitive. It could be habit, but there is a clear difference in result regardless of habits, and I think the most productive choice is the GNOME-Windows one, and the more "intuitive" one in the sense of what a user might expect out of a virtual desktop, that is, creating a new desktop with its own apps. Of course this is my impression and I am well free not to buy a Mac :)
You can do that same thing just a little different way. Say you want to go through all open apps in one desktop. On my mac its 3 fingers scroll up on trackpad then all windows are exposed. Basically the same function as what you want. Yes technically you are clicking on a window not the application icon but who cares.
Having had issues with KDE I decided to give GNOME a try recently. The decision made to remove these buttons absolutely perplexed me beyond belief.
dios mio!
i just came back to GNOME from KDE after messing something with my system (disk space was eaten fully i don't know why) but all your points are mostly invalid... you can literally start GNOME out of the overview with a simple extension install, then you can launch your apps via whatever you f** want! dmenu? custom shortcuts? mouse gestures? a python script that will listen to your voice? based on weather? come ON, you talk like the bash doesn't exist
your max. and min. buttons are just a toggle in Tweaks app - i have a dedicated button on my mouse which toggles the speed sensibility (inside GNOME not on hardware), really useful for doing digital collage work on GIMP
now the extension critic i found it valid! but who knows how far someone can get with AI... personally i had a custom text box at my top-bar after 2-3 prompts which informed where i'm with my keyboard layer (running QMK, doing HID communication)
Apple is a big pile of shit with biased design much harder to modify but also: locked down to the point your now eating ads. in your expensive premium aluminum box
My experience was the same. GNOME is by and far imo the best DE on Linux when it comes to consistency and being the most accessible to non-technical users. However it’s far, far behind macOS’ UX.
Also re: not to mention with extensions they’re single threaded JavaScript applications essentially so when one crashes it literally crashes the entire DE. Just unacceptable.
Something to keep in mind is that you don't have to use GNOME. There are a ton of window managers that run on Linux, and you can find one that works better for you.
There's not much choice on Mac unless you install Linux on it.
It's linux, you can do everything in the terminal. I've never understood what purpose a "desktop" serves.
Want to start Firefox? type "fir<tab>" in your terminal and hit enter.
Want to see your files? Type "ls" and hit enter. Learn just a tiny bit about pipes, wildcards, and utilities and you can leave those mouse-pushers in the dust.
Or I could use a desktop on expend my limited mental energy on things more relevant to me. It’s far easier for me to remember things in a visual or spatial manner.
If I want to start a program I can click its icon in the taskbar, if I want to see my files I can click the file manager in the taskbar, and since these actions are done with the mouse I can simultaneously lie back in bed while eating trifle with a long spoon.
Mac is just a different philosophy. Yes there are window managers for mac if you really want to replicate linux window management. That is possible for you. There are several tools for this, e.g. Amethyst.
But really mac is less about having every square inch of your monitor filled with a dozen different applications sized perfectly to fit the exact information you want on these screens. You can of course do this if you like but thats not really the philosophy.
The philosophy is that this is a real life desktop. Just like papers on your desk. Do you resize papers various ways and print them to maybe 3 inches across and lay them out on your desk such that you can see every paper at once, no space from one page to the next? No. You have piles. You thumb through piles and pull out stuff you need and lay them loosely next to eachother. Nothing is fixed in any constraints. Stuff can overlap or have space in between.
This is exactly how windows management works in macos. It is simply a different philosophy, but it is much closer to how desktop management actually works in real life with a physical desktop and physical papers.
My favorite part of GNOME is how the Windows 8 start screen wannabe truncates the names of apps, and provides absolutely no way to see their full name.
Don't know if it's still the case on the latest version, but for like a decade, opening it on Ubuntu would greet you with an icon named "Software Upda..." and another one named "Software & Up...". Every time I saw it, I'd have to stop and scratch my head for a minute, wondering how such a thing could remain unchanged for so long.
GNOME 2 used to mimic Classic Mac OS UI, plus it was super customizable and easy to create extensions for.
Peperridge Farm remembers.
Ah yes. Gnome. The beloved Linux distro that does not hold the Linux community back in any way shape or form. They’re doing a good thing by holding wayland development back and keeping us in the 90s forever! Go Gnome!
I thought I was the only one.
Maybe it's because I started on Windows and Gnome "feels" closer? Hard to quantify. Like they're US and Britain, while macOS is China.
I got a third party replacement battery in my iPhone. The battery works just fine and the reason is simple, I no longer live in the US, where the phone was purchase, and if I want to keep my 2 esim slots, then I can't get the phone fixed in Hong Kong. Anyone who thinks Apple is very convenient has never lived in multiple countries, imo.
But that's not the worst of it. It took me some time to realize this, but when I wanted to see why my battery was draining so fast one day (I suspect Youtube has a long standing bug that causes it to go turbo drain mode for some reason, the app is incredibly poorly programmed and leaks memory over time, if you didn't know).
But lo and behold, I couldn't see the per-app battery usage breakdown! Why is that? Turns out Apple disables it if it can't detect a third party battery. Why? I'm sure someone will come and try to defend it, but if you do, you better come with an EE degree and math. To me, it looks like a punishment for not being able to go back to USA within my warranty period to replace my phone's battery which was down to 75% capacity.
It's a little disingenuous that I can't toggle notifications for Settings.app off in the Notifications section of Settings.
What are the free software alternative phones/tablets and how do we concentrate our support so at least one of them is successful?
Reach out to Fulu, this should be a project.
https://www.fulu.org/contact-us
best bet is currently GrapheneOS and that is still Adroid and will likely have to fight an up-hill battle in coming years
there are some (decent & serious) Efforts to make Linux apps/UI tools phone format compatible
but for various reasons (mostly hardware) stuff like e.g. the Libre phone feel more like toys for enthusiast and very committed people then things a "average" person can just use.
The biggest problem in the future seems to be the regulatory capture/lobby induced "well meant but bad done" laws, wrt. to misguided device attestation laws which "happen" to in effect require you to have a Google Android or iPhone in practice even through that not actually being needed for the law to work.
This is not new, I remember seeing those for the whole year (till potential Apple care promotion expires) when you buy a new phone years ago, and yes, they stay for weeks or longer.
That's not a new thing. I bought my first apple product (an iPad) last year and the free trials and nagging to set up iCloud cause the Settings app to have a red dot all of the time.
My flip phone is a completely ad-free experience. I would recommend it for just that reason (among many, many other benefits).
With no channel for ads in your life, when you step into public spaces, you realize how much of our linguistic and visual spectrums are polluted by ads. The ad is always the same message too: "Buy this!" it screams as loud as it can, often trying to do so over the noise floor of other ads.
Remove ads from your life and behold the vistas of thought that open up, those previously drowned out by mindless noise.
I want (and plan) to have a flip phone one day, but work necessitates that I have a mobile OS that can support things like MFA, unfortunately.
You might want to check out the Bigme HiBreak phones, they're basically low-mid Android phones with e-ink screens. They work perfectly well for the dull functional things expected of a phone, while rendering all the addictive and spammy patterns pretty ineffective. I've found my one very useful as an intermediate step between a dumbphone and a traditional smartphone.
I tried out dumb.co. Their flip phone supports maps, MFA, Uber, imessage/call forwarding.
I unfortunately didn't use it nearly as much as I thought I would have. It's also significantly bulkier in my pocket than my 13 mini. Loved the idea though.
Why though? I mean you can use your 13 mini like that and just delete everything but those couple apps you actually need.
Why do you need a flip phone though? Just use your smartphone as you would a flip phone. Don't install ticktok. Problem solved.
The one I have is also lying to me, it says: "Activate iCloud Storage - An iCloud storage upgrade is ready to be used with your Apple Account "account@icloud.com". Continue"
I then click "Continue" and it's an upsell decoy, pay to upgrade.
I'm sorry but that message to me reads like I have been granted an upgrade not that I have been blessed with the opportunity to spend my money on more juice.
Really disappointed at this one, I like and use Apple, but this is off brand and has a really bad taste.
I suppose you haven't seen the messages that come when you accidentally turn on photos in icloud and then run out of space and try to turn it off?
They somehow manage to threaten you that they'll delete your local photos...
Well, the thing that confuses me is that I am not running out of space I have a 2TB iCloud plan already and it has plenty of room.
Yep, after being a huge Apple Maps advocate for years to family and friends, I have quit it completely after I got a pop up introducing new ads.
Mostly just using CoMaps now, or Google Maps if I need to look up business hours or get traffic info.
If Apple has ads too then I might as well just use Google for that stuff since at least it’s probably more correct…
I just installed Google maps after 4 years and man it is shitty with cosntant recommendations and nags too. I just want a map and search and directions. But Apple maps is sooooo shitty at those...
I find Apple is better at turn-by-turn navigation, while Google is better at business and POI data. I will usually look stuff up on Google Maps, but use Apple Maps in the car for navigation. Google's navigation is (last I used it) bad at telling me what's next. I'll turn, it will say nothing, then wait until I'm right on top of something to tell me to do it... I find it stressful.
I've seen several people in this tread mention CoMaps. I took a quick look, and while I want it like it, I can't help but see significant limitations where it might be nice when it works, but I'd always need a backup. In situations like this, I find the backup always just becomes the go-to.
CoMaps works really well as a wrapper of OpenStreetMaps. It even has seemingly-accurate hours for a few businesses near me! And if you are willing to dig into accessibility settings on the iPhone you can choose a good quality voice for navigation.
But yeah it’s offline navigation with all of the limitations that come with that
I never noticed that with google myself. I will say between apple maps and google maps that google maps is far more accurate for traffic estimates. You may be tempted to go with apple maps sitting them side by side when apple says its 6 mins faster than google. That is not apple maps finding some magic route. That is apple maps being dumb.
My unpleasant introduction to Apple Maps ads recently was opening it to look for nearby restaurants, and seeing an ad for a domestic violence lawyer nearby. Apple has now lost all credibility when it comes to respecting the user, not that they had much left at this point.
What I don't understand is that all of our data is being gathered everywhere for decades now, but the ads are still not targeted with any degree of precision.
Relatedly, Apple finally kicked me off the quick update bandwagon with macOS/iOS 26, and I was surprised to learn that no, Apple does not let you just say no to updates. You get a permanent red badge that you can only dismiss by fully turning off system notifications, you get nagged literally thousands of times, and if any of those times you don’t repeat your rejection quickly enough, it overrides your non-consent and updates. That’s all with updates turned off. HN comment sections had led me to believe that consensual updates are a pro of Apple over Windows and an example of Apple’s class, but they don’t exist, the actual software is everything people lambast Windows for.
I have a script to add an /etc/hosts entry for `127.0.0.1 gdmf.apple.com` and that seems to eliminate any nagging, just remove when it's time to update.
Nice. Someone made a site to notify for updates when you have that subdomain blocked.
https://github.com/travisvn/stop-tahoe-update/issues/19#issu...
This was after Apple broke the trick to prevent Tahoe update nags.
And even if you have automatic updates turned off, Apple will still start downloading the 15 gigs for MacOS 27, just in case...
And disable certain features like Apple Pay if you don’t have auto-updates enabled.
You can turn off the nagging by joining the Beta updates (profile) for the older major iOS version.
This is not to excuse Apple, just a useful trick.
I doubt John Ternus will change direction anytime soon, since it will look like he’s reversing the plethora of eyesore ads that Tim Cook added over his tenure.
But the Apple with ads is not the Apple that had some taste and discernment in the past. For a long time I’ve visited the App Store’s app update page directly (tap and hold on App Store icon to see the context menu option). Anytime I inadvertently go to the App Store home page or the few times I search, it’s an ad filled disaster!
From this article
From a recent post by John Gruber:
Looks like Tim Cook, John Ternus and Eddy Cue really enjoy being swamped with ads in their products. Will there soon be a time when Apple executives start carrying some other brand’s devices with them to avoid having a rotten experience?
[1]: We don’t want ads https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/07/28/jobs-we-dont-wa...
Ad revenue is bad revenue if you're going for the high end of the market. If it has ads, it's crap.
Apple has all but conquered the high end of the market, but that ad revenue... it's so tempting... soooo tempting... just one hit...
What are you going to do? Switch to android which has even more ads?
What we need is antitrust enforcement so there are other options and more competition. The free market can't fix anything if the market is just a race to the bottom between two companies
I do not see a lot of ads on Android but i think that might be my particular (light and limited) usage.
You are right though. A duopoly is rarely a competitive market, especially for complex products (it can be for commodities)
Probably. There aren't many ads on iOS either aside from when you buy another Apple product and add it to your collection. If you just have the phone you won't see most of the ads mentioned in the article.
I am either blind to ads or i see no ads in android (samsung). of course many apps have ads, at least not in the actual OS.
They also try to sell Samsung Care+ through the settings app.
Android has more ads if you buy it through a carrier, but you can easily make it have far fewer ads by installing LineageOS, and then installing Firefox with the real uBlock origin (not ublock origin lite).
iOS does not allow you to install alternative browsers, nor can you customize the OS to the level of lineageOS, so iOS simply cannot match the best that you can do on android.
Android has more of a free market because on my pixel phone, I can choose either Google's android distribution, or LineageOS, or Graphene, or build my own ROM. I can use F-Droid or the google play store.
What we need is laws requiring that all iDevices apple makes are open hardware which support installing android, iOS, or a custom OS you build yourself, all hardware-essential drivers are free, and so on. That would let people compete on the software side of thing while Apple's hardware team iterates on that. If iOS really is better on its merits, people would install it even with the option to pick other OSs.
I invite you, respectfully, to take a moment and consider how many average people would even begin to comprehend anything that you suggested.
Android's "free" market comes with the freedom to be bombarded by ads. As much as i used to like that, i now recommend only apple phone and computers to normal people. The average person has no idea what lineageOS is, forget about knowing how to install it.
Or just none? I'm not doing anything special and the only ads I ever see are from some games.
I strongly disagree with this sentiment, Apple shouldn’t be forced by the government to allow other OSes on their products. There is a solution to this, it’s simply to stop buying Apple products if that’s a concern.
Your proposal is that the way to address market consolidation is to buy a different product. You can see the problem with that, right? Products with a network effect need a critical mass of users to be viable, e.g. to be targeted by third party developers and hardware OEMs. The way they achieve that is by starting off with compatibility with existing apps and devices. If the incumbents can lock them out of doing that then new challengers are doomed and your proposed solution is unavailable.
Moreover, it stops being "Apple's product" when they sell it to the customer.
Almost every company, tech or otherwise, even expanding into things like sports have faced this. It’s nothing new. If Android or Linux OEMs want to convince people to move to their ecosystem they should just produce better products that the majority of a population would actually want. Not run to the government to hinder another company because they can’t or won’t compete technologically or brand wise.
There is nothing Apple is doing to lock competitors out of the market. iMessage, Facetime? Convince customers that your option is better.
And also Apple customers buy the hardware knowing it runs macOS/iOS. Apple has never once advertised the OS is changeable or the ecosystem is “open” unlike Google who started that way and is trying to claw things back. You don’t go to a BBQ place and get mad that it serves meat and demand they start serving vegetarian food.
You might if there were only two restaurants and both were really meaty.
Yes, there are more than 2 phone OS options but nearly the whole of the market is those 2.
I had an iPhone 13 Mini. I found it to be much worse about ads.
Every time I opened the system settings, it would insert an ad for an Apple TV Trial after a 2 second delay, causing all the items to shift down, forcing me to either wait every time I opened Settings or else mis-click when it finished loading the ad.
Android doesn't do this, it just shows me the system settings. I was so glad to go back to Android.
At least Android allows truly alternative web browsers with ad blockers that aren't handicapped by Manifestv3 limitations.
I use the Orion browser on my iPhone and it doesn’t have ads.
I also don’t install the YouTube app so I use the browser to visit the YouTube site and have an ad free experience and can even have audio playing on it while the screen is off or I’m in another app so it’s an objectively better experience than using an android device with the YouTube app that is automatically installed on it.
it’s an objectively better experience than using an android device with the YouTube app that is automatically installed on it
It's not better than YouTube after Morphe. Morphe is an app that can patch other apps. It makes the official YouTube app nice by removing ads, skipping over sponsored segments, remove tracking from links, improves the player, etc.
Would be extremely hard to do something similar on iOS.
Android user here, switched from iOS (not because of ads, a different gripe).
Not going to lie, it's a holistically bad experience, very similar to iOS in this regard. But Android doesn't show ads. The closest thing would be the Google Photos pestering to back up to cloud, things like that. It's per app, and usually there are better apps to replace the offending ones. (And vendor garbage can even be uninstalled, although it's very deliberately inconvenient to do.)
Bonus points for having Brave browser with built-in adblock, for the free YouTube Premium-ish ad-free experience.
I guess you can disable or uninstall Photos but I don't know anything better so I'm currently ignoring the nags.
I was horrified about how many ads my wufe has on her iPhone. I mean web ads in Safari. It's unsusable.
That’s just the internet isn’t it?
Not sure we can blame Apple for that, but I’m sure they could cook up a decent blocker if they wanted.
Install Wipr on her phone. Problem solved.
About Photos: why not disable notifications for the Google Photos app?
It's worse than that. Google Photos sends push notifications telling you to buy photo books and prints unless you opt out. Play Books also sends push notifications telling you to buy particular books; it's also opt out. I'm semi-certain other built-in apps like YouTube and the Play Store do the same. However, once you turn all that junk off, the Pixel experience is pretty good.
Why would you even enable notifications on these apps?
I'm on GrapheneOS, so they are not enabled by default, but I think on Google certified Android you can also switch them off. Also, besides that, if apps implement notifications nicely, they are nicer on Android, because you can turn on/off notifications per category/channel. Of course, some apps just put everything together.
What ads does android have? I see ads when I'm inside specific apps, youtube, chrome, etc, but not when I'm using apps that don't have ads?
My stock Pixel phone has zero ads. It prompts you to enable things like Wallet and all the AI stuff, but I just turned that off, and it's not bothering me anymore. There are no persitent ads.
Android by itself does not have any ads.
I have had until now 4 Android smartphones, which did not have any ads whatsoever.
Like other posters have said, if you do not buy the phone directly, but subsidized by some carrier, then it might come with crap installed on it.
Of course, currently Google appears to make efforts to make Android worse, so it would not be surprising if ads would appear.
Which Android though? AOSP doesn't have ads. But Samsung phones are full of ads for their own and other's services (McAfee VPN, McAfee security scan, OneDrive, etc.). I heard that Chinese phones are similar. Even Pixel pushes Google One in places.
The primary exceptions are GrapheneOS and Lineage, but it's not like people can buy a phone with them in the store (yet).
Imagine spending $2k on a phone only to be presented with ads. Quick way to lose your luxury and loyal customers IMO.
On the flip side, imagine having another product made for people who can afford $2k phones... Well you'd probably pay a lot to advertise to that market.
I think trying to balance between these 2 is going to be tough, and your luxury market could evaporate if a significant competitor came along. And by competitor, we're probably just talking about AI in your pocket or on your face that replaces the traditional phone interface. I also think it's a real slippery slope to short term profits once you start taking ad revenue.
Where would the luxury market go? Asking for a friend
In general, no where yet. I do think the smart phone interface (iOS) could become at least somewhat obsolete soon. As we move more towards a primarily inference interface it will open up the field to more competitors (less moat). That's just my opinion though. Be interesting, as usual, to see what comes out of China in the next few years.
GrapheneOS with FOSS apps is a premium experience but not where non - technical users will go currently because of the setup. Once setup it's very premium.
Motorola really seems to be going for a luxury look [1] and there will be Motorola devices with GrapheneOS installed out of the box.
[1] https://nitter.miningtcup.me/Moto/status/2102040650606891119...
https://nitter.miningtcup.me/Moto/status/2100933254249627806...
Pantone and some sound partnership.
Just about everybody with money uses contactless payment and it doesn't look like that works with graphene so I'm not sure I would call it premium except for privacy.
Likewise, no Android Auto
There is Android Auto. There's contactless payments in Europe through Curve, Paypal, and some specific banks. Some companies are working on bringing them to the US.
Funny enough, the only part of Apple Pay I use with any frequency is the browser/app integration part, basically as a much more convenient alternative to PayPal sometimes.
IRL I do use it on occasion but everything I use it for, I could just fall back to the contactless chips in my physical plastic CCs - just like I did for all those years on a deGoogled Android phone with no Google Wallet support. The unique value add of Apple Pay in the physical world is nearly zero to me, other than acting as a market force that made US point of sale systems finally catch up to Canada years late and offer tap to pay.
No android auto? What are you basing this on? I ask because I am responding from grapheneos while connected to android auto, and I am concerned I am in the wrong universe again.
Cash is much better for privacy. The government, banking system, and countless intermediaries should not know how I spend my money.
So the lack of contactless payment on GrapheneOS may be inconvenient, but is it consistent with a privacy stance.
I agree about cash, but we are talking about a luxury experience. In fact, GrapheneOS has talked about it [1].
I doubt you're implying this, but GrapheneOS doesn't break contactless, Google does by blocking GrapheneOS. Contactless works with curve and paypal in Europe.
[1] https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117249893761790371
"Moving from cash to credit cards, PayPal, etc. is an ongoing privacy disaster."
From what I've seen of GrapheneOS, it's not a luxury product, it's a product for tinkerers, who don't mind finicky granular configs. If I'm paying a premium, I expect sensible, privacy respecting, defaults that I can use out of the box. Not constant fumbles until everything is "setup".
I don't think there's any defaults you need to change out of the box besides installing the apps you want.
But yeah, besides the stock Android which looks good, GrapheneOS does not add UI features themselves. When they add features like the recent secure clipboard, it fits nicely in the settings.
I think you have a wrong idea about GrapheneOS. You install the sandboxed Play Store/Services through their app store and then it's pretty much the same as any other Android phone. Except that it doesn't get in your face with preinstalled crap (Google, Apple, or Samsung). On the GrapheneOS forums there are a lot of non-technical people that install GrapheneOS and don't have many issues. The primary annoyance is Google's abuse of their monopoly with Play Integrity.
I would say it often feels more like a luxury product than an iPhone or Google-certified Android phone because it's not full of cheesy stuff.
As someone who has daily driven both side by side as much as I love GOS, AOSP / Android absolutely does not feel premium compared to iOS. Both the UI and UX are rough compared to the polish of iOS. And the FOSS apps on Android are extremely subpar in terms of feel compared to iOS (off the top of my head look at how bad the Fossify Contacts app is compared to Google Contacts) but that’s the trade-off.
I also don’t think there will be Motorola devices with GOS out of the box, they’re just meeting the requirements to be able install it.
"There's a high chance." https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117299954135808210
In other posts they've said they will be sold with GrapheneOS out of the box.
Oh damn nice. Guess we’ll also see later today too since the Signature should be revealed at the snapdragon summit
iOS? "Polish"?
Even AOSP is head-and-shoulders better than iOS.
It is subjective, to me AOSP just feels extremely rough and undercooked in a lot of places
Try disabling animations in AOSP and see how it feels. You won't be able to go to the painfully slow iOS afterwards.
They could do what Amazon did for the kindles: pay extra to remove the ads (for the Kindle it was $20 one-time).
For iOS, they could simply charge an extra $600/mo as a "iCloud ad-free premium" fee to remove the ads, and I think that would make everyone happy.
Maybe. How are the seat heater subscription services going for BMW? I thought the market had clearly rejected it, but maybe they powered through and people have begrudgingly accepted it now?
I don't think people want to pay a large sticker price and then an additional monthly fee on top of it to enable features or disable ads... but I honestly don't know. I just know I sure af won't lol.
I think the more comparable thing would be youtube premium (paying to not have as many ads there), and I certainly pay for that.
I have no clue how popular it is though overall, presumably not super popular.
I also don't think the $300-$2000/mo "ad-free iOS subscription" would be super popular if it existed, but idk, I know at least a few people that would go for it.
This isn't comparable, because the base product is free. We're talking about paying an upfront fee for a premium product (like $2k for a phone) and then being shown ads. Youtube would be a vastly different product if everyone had to pay a one time $2k to use it (and then purchase premium to unlock ad-free). It's also noticeable that a lot of the "premium" media services go from being ad-free to ad-light... so we're back to cable... but that's a different discussion.
It's not very popular because you can remove ALL ads from youtube using a free browser extension
That doesn't help you if you use the YouTube app on your phone, which I'm guessing is what a huge fraction of the viewership does.
But you can just use the browser with an adblocker for Youtube on the phone, which also allows you to play audio in the background for free e.g. for playing music, what's the point in using the app at all?
Own a recent-ish BMW. Haven't had to pay for heated seats; I have a button on my climate control to switch it on/off/change the heat levels.
It's a bad idea to pay someone to remove a problem they created for you. That's literally racketeering. They make you pay them to solve a problem that only exists because they put it there to make you pay them to solve it. They can increase the amount of ads at any time to punish holdouts and can increase how much "protection money" they extract from you whenever they want as well. "Nice $2,000 phone you just got buddy, it'd sure be a shame if it was filled with ads wouldn't it?"
Is BMW still doing the $20/mo for heated seats or whatever? All these companies man… not everything needs to be recurring revenue ffs.
That one gets a worse rep than I think it deserves.
You could always pay the one time fee for heated seats like in the past. It was just an option if you don’t want to pay upfront.
It is already built into the damn car. Everyone already paid for it.
It's bad because you already paid for the hardware, any additional charge is just a money grab.
Really? You think a luxury brand charging a subscription for heated seats, a basic add on, is inline (haha rip inline 6).
Pun intended?
Your callout just gave me a great idea: the iPhone Duo has three screens. Depending on orientation, the front screen could be used to show ads to others!
Don't give 'em more ideas! :)
Why is it tough to balance? There are ridiculously cheap ad ridden phones sold in Asia - it makes sense because ads subsidize those phones. How does it make sense to show ads in a $2000 phone, especially from a company that prides themselves for "taste", "courage" and a bunch of other buzzwords? And a company that is already far, far ahead of its competitors when it comes to profit margins in the smartphone business? I don't understand.
It's not about the cost of the phone. If it were they'd stop pushing ads the moment they'd earned back the full cost of the discounted phone you bought. It's purely about greed. Companies push ads so they can stuff more cash in their pockets over and over again for years, if not decades, after the money they got from your initial purchase. It doesn't matter if the phone was $100 or $2000 because ads increase their profits in either case, and money is literally the only thing they care about.
The real question is why is the median Apple decision maker circa 2026 vastly more short term greedy than the median Apple decision maker circa 2012?
While I don't know, my suspicion is that the market is saturated, but the company is still hungry for "numbers go up".
"We have a large, loyal consumer base and can count on a steady return for many years," is no longer sufficient. So corporations cannabalize, turning long-term strengths into short term profits.
It's what we're doing to our entire civilization. Why should Apple do anything different?
I think it's not just Apple. Everyone and every company seem to become greedier and greedier. Economically, the world is not in a great place, apart from a minority which just gets richer and richer.
I think some of it just that different people have different priorities. Some of what protected Apple was vanity. I think Steven Jobs cared about how people saw him and his products. He wanted to be the guy who made a premium product that he thought was cool and was proud of. The longer time went on, the less Apple execs cared about what he would have wanted and started caring more about what they wanted.
I also think that they're counting on people to have been conditioned to accept ads everywhere. Microsoft has been infesting their OS with ads for over a decade which, like it or not, has normalized that practice.
Apple is counting on the fact that iphone users aren't going to switch to android devices just because the company starts pushing ads in their face. In addition to all the customers who don't stop buying apple products because they are filled with ads, a percentage of them will start paying for more Apple products and services because of the ads. The obvious next step from here is to increase the amount of ads until that's no longer the case. Get used to seeing ads iphone users; it's only going to get worse.
I think the Apple Effect was largely a result of personal narcissism.
Jobs had to be the smartest and most tasteful person in the room, even when he pretended otherwise. He was desperate for adulation from customers who loved him for his taste, inventiveness, risk-taking, and style.
The motivation was questionable and arguably toxic, but the results were spectacular.
Cook was more of a nickel and dime guy. So far Ternus is looking disappointingly similar.
The share price is all. Customers are the farm animals who Make Number Go Up, and Make Number Go Up is Rule Number One.
The kind of customer focus that drove Jobs is fading into background noise.
What happened to Apple University, or whatever they called Job’s attempt to document their key to success?
Some MBA poisoned it?
No more Jobs being tastemaker at the helm. Cook is pure business.
I guess advertising to people who pay 2000 for a phone are a more valuably audience than those buying phones for 80 bucks.
But I agree, I wish more leaders in the product development space would just stand up and say: "it's garbage, it's hostile towards our users, so we won't do it, because it compromises our values for a quick buck"
apple crowd is highly uncritical, I struggle to use word objective towards their approach to their beloved brand. So corporation is testing how much more they can milk customers before they stand up and go to competition. Their ad business has been growing steadily in past years, its not coming from nowhere and it has been discussed here (with strong disdain) ad nausea.
Wait, you thought apple, unlike every other company, is not out there for maximal profit for owners but some sort of higher mission? Or where does the misunderstanding comes from? The era of respectful companies having long term utmost moral standing and behavior thinking decades ahead is thing of the past. At least for big boys thats pretty clear.
You mean like when I clicked this article? What an ad filled mess of a website.
At least with this website, ad blockers will hide most/all of the ads. The ads built into iOS cannot be blocked or even dismissed. The future is going to be apps- and OS-level ads.
Unfortunately, not true. Very, very, very few people are going to abandon the years of work they've put into using iOS and macOS because of a few pesky ads. Sure, they'll complain about it, but they won't actually switch.
it'll still be a net loss. how many customers sign up to icloud+ because of these ads -vs- how much do these ads tarnish the brand apple has spent so much money building?
if it could wver be quantified, i bet it's a net $ loss. and apples esteemed image is ostensibly very important to them. why the hell do apple execs think different?
It's a thermocline of trust issue. Apple can abuse their customers for profit for a while, but eventually all the little insults add up and they'll lose them in bulk. And when it happens, Apple won't understand why.
That applies to businesses with small moats.
Designing and producing a new smartphone with an equivalent feature set and performance and power efficiency is about as big of a moat as you can get.
Great reference! Agree, it's a "last straw" situation -- you can foist all these indignities upon your "captive" user base, right up until you can't.
Maybe. But at least some (like me) will become more hesitant to buy newer products or update to the latest system (I am still on Sequoia because of all this crap lately). And we will also become more hesitant to recommend Apple products. If this is hurting them enough to stop is another question…
and yet you have to restrain yourself from ever capitalizing on that, because not advertising to that market is what got you that market in the first place
You lose customers to those products. I’ve switched to CoMaps. Some of my friends went back to Google Maps—the differentiator for Apple was privacy and that seems to have been lost in kind even if not yet in magnitude.
Going to Google Maps in response to Apple adding ads to Maps doesn't make a lot of sense. Google has been putting ads in Google Maps for many years. Is the view that they're both the same now, in terms of having ads, so they might as well use the one with the better POI data?
Yup. If the main differentiator is gone, you move to the next marginal thing that matters, which in this case is working as a map.
I've been hearing this kind of thing a lot, but if a customer is paying for a luxury product, and part of that luxury is not having ads (or being an ad)... advertising to them because of it breaches the trust, erases the luxury, and alienates that valuable customer.
At some point, customers price themselves out of advertising. We see this in fashion. Designer brands have their consumer level lines with logos all over them, then they usually have a luxury line where those logos go away. With Ralph Lauren, for example, Polo gets you a logo on almost everything[0], while Purple is nearly logo free[1].
[0] https://www.ralphlauren.com/men-clothing-button-down-shirts/...
[1] https://www.ralphlauren.com/men-clothing-button-down-shirts/...
Customers who are "only" willing to pay $130 for a shirt should get ads, it's fine, because if they didn't want ads, they should pay up for that shirt, to the tune of $500¹?
Do you understand how incredibly privileged you have to be to afford a $500 shirt? (Most people would say that about the $130 shirt!) Then that principle, applied across my entire set of life expenses, just to get a company to not take advantage of me?
¹… and that's tossing the $3,000 shirt on that page, too…
The point was that the highest level of luxury does not advertise itself. If Apple wants to be seen as a luxury brand, which is something they spent decades building, they should not be pushing these ads so hard. Building that image took a long time, but it can all go away very quickly.
Apple was a company that allowed fairly normal people to have a luxury experience without the 10x price tag, and they're ruining it. People still make "Apple tax" comments, but when looking at their competitors, they really aren't outlandish, like these shirts are.
Fashion is a weird analogy because I can get stuff even from well known designers from places like Uniqlo with no logos on them. A better example is cars, where people are often happy to show off their status symbol logos, and will buy other things that go along with their car.
The car analogy doesn’t land for me. I was trying to show an example where people paid to opt out of advertising. The car example, is the exact thing the person I was replying to was talking about… a brand sells the customer something expensive, then keeps advertising to them in hopes that they will keep buying more nonsense to go with it… selling to the captive audience. This is exactly what I don’t want.
No way- look at the users on this site simping for every Apple product. If we don't stand up to it then why would the normies?
And where are those customers going to go? The only other option is Android, which is even more bloated and ad infested. Even if Apple is worse now than they were before, there still isn't a better option available.
You can't lose customers if there's no alternative. In the modern era, the average person can't simply not have a phone. It's a necessity, and when a product is necessary for daily life, you lose your options.
No, nothing will come of this. People will be mad and hate Apple more, but consequence is not possible here.
We need an open phone platform badly.
Since when? I never see any ads at all on my Android phone. I can use uBlock Origin in my browser and I can install 3rd party ad-free clients for apps like YouTube and Twitch.
Even better, Morphe can rip ads out of the native YouTube client :).
Where would they go? Android? That's even more spammy and ad ridden. They sure aren't installing grapheneOS.
In my mind, if I truely was in this luxury/premium market, I'd increase the price of the phone to include the other services, so there would be no need for these "ads" to be shown.
Presumably, I'd be laughed out of the board room.
There's no chance these guys don't already have the full suite of Apple services (whether or not they use them) tied to their iCloud accounts. They've probably never even seen the nagware.
I would also guess they practically never use the App Store. In fact I would guess there's virtually no dogfooding of it at all internally, because they have 100k+ employees but need blogs to tell them when a sanctioned Russian bank's stealth submission is topping the free charts.
Who _is_ using the App Store these days? It's such a mess.
Does anyone use the App Store other than to search for an already known app name? I probably have not in over a decade, and I can't see a reason I ever would.
Ive often wondered if there is some magic internally Appleid setting which turns an account into an ad free one for internal execs.
If you could buy into an account like this, with the cost being just over the ad profit from my account, I’d be interested.
Exactly, the enshitificaton of Apple proves that Greed can never be satisfied: even a trillion dollar company, with a fanatic consumer base (that is ironically paying premium $ for the best USER experience) and THE tightest ecosystem grip that yields huge App-Store tax revenues, even such a company is not 'satisfied' and still can't escape capitalist logic and the stock-market's "perpetual share value growth" force and has to cannibalize user experience until at some point it will either implode or somehow manages to balance the 'just shitty/good enough' tightrope over their walled-garden (hello Microsoft).
In any case, user experience and the original ethos the company was build around has been lost for a long time, and enshitification by greed seems the ultimate outcome for every company that is traded publicly or equity funded.
I bet they don’t see any ads, because their accounts will have the highest tier (or even a special one above that) of everything.
That’s bad hardening. You are not supposed to use your root account for everyday work.
No, hardening has nothing to do with it. They have a feature flag system deeply embedded in their software. And such systems can totally distribute different flags to different people. And that's how you could easily create VIP accounts with different behaviors than the rest of the world, like all ad festures turned off.
reminds of me of an instance where the opposite happened:
https://www.techdirt.com/2008/06/25/you-thought-you-hated-wi...
I'm 99% sure the hardening part was a joke
It's not a root account issue, it's that they have already bought all the services there are to buy. One would assume that once you buy a service, they would stop prompting you to buy it.
Though, in my experience, that isn't true with Apple. Even when I tried Apple One, I still saw bugs in the experience that led to ads for things I already subscribed to... particularly in News+ and AppleTV+.
Jobs would truly lose his shit if he saw what Apple has become.
Source - worked at Apple ~2010.
I haven’t worked for Apple but you’re definitely correct. Just compare what Jobs said about using a stylus with how happy the company was to announce that you could use Apple Pencil with the iPhone duo. It is self-evident. It’s far from the company Jobs once ran.
You’re misunderstanding that quote. “If you saw a stylus they blew it!” referred to requiring a stylus to interact with the touch display. Having one optional, mainly for drawing, isn’t quite the same thing.
That said I doubt he’d be happy at the current Pencil lineup. It’s a mess.
Literal pencil-pushers are ruining the product!
I like being able to use Procreate or other image editing software on my iPad, and the only reason I’d consider a foldable in the first place is because I’d like to use it like I use my iPad. What’s so bad about having the option to use a stylus? Who cares what a dead tech oligarch once thought of styluses? Especially when the state of the technology wasn’t where it’s at now. If you could ask Jobs now, maybe he would have changed his mind.
Jobs has long been vocal about protecting the user experience. Not 100% sure if it's true, but I heard Jobs was originally opposed to custom apps running on the iPhone (the App Store), because he 'didn't want to turn iPhone in Windows'.
Jobs was right. Apps are so shitty now I don't even bother. Everything has a subscription now and there's so much noise its hard to actually find signal on the appstore.
Imagine if he had stuck to his guns on native apps. iPhone would’ve either died or we’d all be living in a web apps paradise right now.
It wouldn't have died - most apps are still just a thin UI over a corresponding online service, and most of the data and services proprietary APIs provide ended up achievable in a browser too. It is really just the internet that makes apps and smartphones useful.
All apps really offered was a way to gatekeep payments in games that groom impulsive spending habits, they just happened to start making very serious money on Facebook right about the moment Jobs changed his mind.
Early on it was different with a lot more stuff actually running locally vs cloud service era. App store predated that for a little bit actually. There weren't microtransactions initially either. What you'd call a AAA game for that platform back then would actually be $9.99 one time payment.
Didn’t Jobs frequently lose his shit when he did work at Apple?
Indeed. That’s what resulted in Apple beingn different than competition. Too bad Apple engineers were reprimanded and publicly humiliated, sometimes with no fault. But Jobs had a vision that’s been long gone from Apple and it really shows. Sometimes I wonder if Jobs himself would be corrupted by Apple’s success but I’ll never know the answer to that…
That's not a given. Visionary people sometimes go mildly insane over time. Source: worked at VKontakte and Telegram and watched it slowly happen to Durov.
Don’t mix apples with oranges Steve was The Apple those guys are CE—replaceable-O-ranges. If board and shareholders want ads there is no one to tell them get lost anymore.
Wow, I read it as "John Temu", which seems to be what Apple is being turned into.
This whole saga is straight up the standard enshittification playbook by Cory Doctorow. And with no real ownership of the "purchased" hardware is why you all are in this mess.
Glad I'm a Linux user and admin.
Worth remembering that Steve Jobs championed "iAds"... https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2011/12/13/steve-jobs...
Yeah & they veered so hard into tying to make them tasteful & not suck that it failed. Turns out the real money is in spyware.
Ternus was one of the main people driving these eyesores. He wasn't a nobody.
What are these plethora of eyesore ads because the one that they’re mentioning in this article is the only one I have come across.
What are you talking about? Apple users love ads. Dial it up a notch, force users to only watch ads. They'll pay twice as much.
the quotes around the word ads are pretty infuriating.
Is this a bigger problem on iOS 27? Should I continue to stay on 18?
It's just ao insane that a company that's sitting on a massive pile of cash and has been wildly profitable for decades still needs to do this. I suppose the valuation requires more growth, and they're out of good ideas.
Look at any recent Apple revenue breakdown. If you pretend that the iPhone doesn't exist, Apple's most profitable market segment is services. Even the iPad and Mac can't dethrone it.
According to leaked BOMs, the iPhone usually has ~40% profit margins. It's very likely that Apple Music, the App Store and iCloud all turn >90% margins, which is basically free revenue to shareholders.
I find it ironic that I am attempting to read an article that says what it says while 80% of the screen is ads and asking me to register to their notifications.
I went to Apple to de-Google, 5 years in and I just went to GrapheneOS to de-Apple (and re-Google just a bit too much for comfort but ok).
The Appstore is a cesspool, and now these "ads".
Why does it always happen? I bought Hue Lighting some years ago. It was all lean and nice, and now when open the app I almost always get an ad for some new light they want to sell me. So dirty, so cheap. Is it all just a race to the bottom? I just avoid the app and use Home Assistant now (when there is no button, because I also avoid using my Phone to control the house).
I'm on my Linux laptop now, being productive. It's so clean. Really still love it as much as ever, thanx for staying the same, and clean, and respecting me. I forgive you the horrible battery time ;)
The article then ends by displaying an ad for Apple products.
I really don’t get this. Apple is trying to sell you 2 or 3 addons that are really beneficial and great products that make sense.
I don’t need them, I don’t buy them.
But I really appreciate there being a button at a place that logically makes sense and that gives you the opportunity to make more out of your device.
AFAIK you can click them away.
It’s not as if there are intrusive popups or as if they are trying to sell you blackmarket ware.
I have a subscription to Apple+, 2 TB, $40 month plan.
I'm still getting the ads to upgrade my storage. Can't dismiss it. Why?
$40 for only 2tb? Extortion.
Nah - Music, TV, Fitness etc all included. All shared with the family (and extended family) so it doesn't have the friction of piecemealing it all together, which I value more than anything.
From the article, many users report being unable to disable them:
There is also the possibility that at least some of these adverts are appearing due to a bug. The iCloud+ one in particular has drawn comments from users who are already subscribed to iCloud+ and thus, one would think, should not need to see any ads like this."
Anecdotally I have had this happen in the past, but not currently. I am particularly annoyed by the pattern where after an update it nags me to set up Siri, and the only way to remove the red notification icon is to partially progress through the setup before quitting. If you exit early the notification persists.
That is precisely what an advertisement is, congratulations on identifying the issue.
I've tried clicking them away and they keep coming back. E.g. my current watch is about to hit a year old and doesn't have Apple Care. I clicked away anything about the Apple Card in Wallet and I just had it sitting right at the top when I was trying to get to my boarding pass last week. I have no idea why it keeps telling me about Apple Fitness or Apple Music each time I purchase a new device, I was aware of it the last 6 times it tried to push those.
I don't mind a simple "You might be interested in these other services for your device" during initial setup. I do mind post set-up ads I have to click to disable in different places across my devices multiple times over time. It's just trashy.
People are being intentionally obtuse in order to find something to get mad about.
Obviously offering upgrades to your own product is not the same as "showing ads" by any common understanding of the term.
Otherwise literally every app that offers a free version or trial with some form of paid upgrade would be considered "showing ads" because there's an upgrade button somewhere in the app.
If you're going to call that "showing ads" then I would argue you've overloaded the definition to the point where it becomes meaningless.
Yeah I feel like this is the nuance that gets lost.
I hate ads, but mentioning other first party services feels very different than selling parts of the system UI like a billboard.
These service upsells should be dismissible but they seem fairly inoffensive. The App Store ads, on the other hand, are just atrocious
Wow, I've joked twice in the past two days about Apple becoming Microsoft and it's completely true.
1. Can't turn off Siri easily, turns itself back on.
2. Apple search not things it should obviously being able to find, just like Windows search.
3. Ads in the operating system like Windows 10+
The irony of this website being so loaded with ads that I can barely read the contents is palpable :P
But on-topic: iOS shouldn't show any ads.
I didn't pay $2000 to view that web page. A new iPhone, OTOH...
(But, yeah, I'm reminded that I need to set up a Pi-Hole on the Starlink in the camper. I'm paying by the byte for those TechRadar ads.)
Comparing the Settings banner to the Start menu banner as seems a bit overblown. One you only see when you open settings, which is typically not daily or even necessarily weekly for most people; the other you see potentially up to hundreds of times a day, every day you that use your device. This article would have been a lot more meaningful if it had focused on the Maps app’s ads and the News app’s ads (by Taboola!), which do actively interfere with the quality of experience delivered and are enshittifying services provided, or the Game Center “try this other app” ads that float over other apps and can’t be disabled, in order to make the point that the badge ads were in fact the earliest harbinger of the slippery slope we always fear everything to be. Lacking any actual investment of effort along those lines, it reads more as wahmbulance chasing than meaningful news.
There absolutely is a market for a new 'premium' smartphone maker to arrive.. But given the hardware prices currently, we are stuck with two companies who are purely now squeezing every cent they can out of us while destroying their experience.
This is clickbait. The way they put "ads" in quotes every time shows they know what they're doing. I've seen some other comments here complaining about ads in Maps (which I've never used and can't speak to), but this article is specifically calling out the long-existing practice of Settings showing a little badge on new devices that says "You're entitled to some free months of Arcade/TV" or whatever. That's not an ad, or an "ad."
Agreed, clickbait. The only reason I clicked the article was because I _didn’t_ see any new ads after upgrading iOS, so I was curious what they meant.
That's the thing, though. Those modal offer popups have been in macOS and iOS for a really long time, and does cheapen the experience like Microsoft and Google products do.
It's definitely an ad, but it's also been there for years now. And of all the ads I encountered across various platforms and spaces in real life, these are about the least obnoxious.
A true Microsoft-like moment for Apple.
I want to pay a premium for no built in adds and a more secure product.
If that goes away I will have no reason to buy apple.
"Just don't look at the ads! What's the big deal?"
It's not just iOS. Final Cut Pro on MacOS now regularly advertises iPadOS Final Cut Pro (which is a paid SaaS tool). Professional applications (arguments about Final Cut Pro X not being all that professional notwithstanding) that advertise like that are almost non-existent in the pro audio and video industry; an Apple pro app advertising, would have been heresy a few years ago.
And yeah, it drives me crazy. It's one more, wildly unnecessary, click.
Logic is one of the last tools keeping me tethered to MacOS. I've got 26 years invested in it, but the moment I open it up to record something and see an ad, it's over. Ardour and Bitwig will suffice, even if it means flushing tens of thousands of dollars of software down the toilet with it (the core suite of plugins I use).
I'm tired of unnecessary speed bumps in the creative process. It's why I no longer use a Roli Seaboard (what wildly awful software).
Apple continues down a course (addicted to ads, even their own) that I've seen few recover from.
The title had me thinking they had actual adverts open to advertisers. It's not, just someone winging about apple advertising icloud+ and some other stuff in their settings app where you can directly enable it. Come on you lot, this is fine, it's like the least ad driven mainstream commercial platform.
They show a notification for that, which is super annoying.
The least crap of the crap is not a laudable position. I’m a big Apple fan but they need to stop this shit with advertising. The amount of advertising built in to a $1,000+ device, including ads for the device maker’s own services, should be exactly zero.
Apple Maps now has ads... er, sorry, "preferred listings".
No, it’s not fine.
Can't have ads and tell me you're privacy focused.
Ads and tracking don’t have to be related. Physical ads in magazines and newspapers are still ads, but don’t report on who you are. Similarly, if you have a service connected to an account on your OS, it knows which tier you are on and can try to upsell you.
I’m not defending ads or Apple here, far from it as I hate what they’re doing. I’m just saying that while we’re used to privacy invading ads, not all ads have to be so.
There’s some irony here about an ad-filled tech blog complaining about ads.
I don't think it's entirely the same situtation with ads on a blog you read for free vs ads on a device you pay a lot of money for.
Why put it in 'quotation marks'. It's ads, not 'ads'.
Because they’re not. They’re just a little added row in the Settings app exclusively.
And you can dismiss them.
It's lousy that you can't turn off the badge notifications for the Settings app, which is where they push this garbage. I'm still on iOS 18, and I just have to live with a red '1' on my Settings app because I haven't updated my OS. It also pokes me every week or two to update.
It's not Microsoft-level annoyance, but it's not the way Apple used to be, either.
You could move the settings app to a less-used home-screen page, or you can remove the settings icon from the home screen entirely.
It's mildly annoying to have to do the swipe-down-and-search to get to settings but it's not an app I use all that often.
Yeah, I've not pulled the trigger on this yet. I assume I'll get a new phone before too long and then will be forced to use the current OS.
And the b0rked that with the new Siri - I had to turn Siri off today because I literally couldn't get to an app unless I knew its location on the Home Screen.
I haven’t seen any of these. iOS 27.0, in the EU fwiw
so let me get this straight you pay more than 1500 bucks for a phone and then you get ads delivered to said phone?
its funny reading an article like this and seeing 5 ads across it
The ‘ads’ appear even if you are already paying for those services of the ads
Apple promotes other Apple products in Apple products. End of the world. This yellow press is annoying. "Journalism". All this outrage to fullfill daily quota of text output.
And clickbaity title to go with it. As if there are temu ads on the lock screen.
Funny to read claims like that on techradar, that showed multiple pop-up frames around the 'article' and on top of it. But they haven't added an image of that 'ads'. No you have to read and try to understand what happened.
Yep, I had trouble reading this article because it was entirely covered in ads.
Using the internet without an adblocker is like refusing to use a condom
You can use ublockorigin on firefox to solve the problem. You can do nothing about system ads on iphone
I thought the exact same thing. Of course, a key difference is that those of us who choose to pay for an iPhone, use iOS, and often pay for additional services are already giving Apple our money. They're trying to extract more and more from us and it's honestly insulting. I give techradar credit for providing us their user-hostile experience for free.
You are free to use an adblocker or the "reader" view in your browser.
This is a solved problem and you are not utilizing the solutions.
Tech radar has to keep the lights on somehow because they’re giving the article away for free.
Apple you paid a lot of money to already.
If it wasn’t broken I wouldn’t mind
The irony of this site having ads that cover 1/3 of my screen on mobile was absolutely lost on the author.
Where are these ads?? Are they when you open up a program?.
Techradar complaining about Ads while it's showing three different full-screen popups while trying to just read the first paragraph of the article is certainly a choice
Enshitificaion!
Thank goodness... I thought I was the only one complaining. Ever since Apple started putting ads in the App store, I started referring to them as an "ad company". Every time I search for, say, "Signal" and see the first result be a "promoted" link to "Whatsapp", my blood boils.
F*k any company that shows me ads on the hardware/software that I bought from them. ESPECIALLY if they were once NOT an ad company... and then transitioned to one.
I'm fine seeing ads if they were part of the original deal -- for example, the ad subsidized Amazon Kindles. But nothing is safe or sacred anymore. I am all but certain that if you paid for a Kindle with no-ads (ie: you paid the premium), you can be 100% sure that you will eventually see ads!
All contracts, all privacy policies, all terms of use... come with a clause to the effect of "we can change this whenever we want and by using it, you consent!"
Mark my word: very soon, every commercial OS will use shady TOS to train their AI models on every byte you have on your hard drive. ZERO privacy. And if Linux becomes popular enough, you can be certain that the ad companies will start financing open source projects so that they can pressure them to exfiltrate data.
I remember when I was young, there was an organization, Nielsen Media Research [1], that would seek a statistically significant number of volunteers whose television viewing habits they could monitor. They existed because it was ILLEGAL for cable companies to monitor and collect data about what you watched.
Others have said it, and I'll repeat it: this is NOT a problem that can be fixed with technology. People need to get pissed off and write their legislators, and those legislators need to grow a backbone.
In the meantime, the ad industry lobbyists will be spending tons of money to (1) convince legislators otherwise and (2) keep the masses ignorant of the scale of the surveillance apparatus they have created.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_Media_Research
for the first time in many years it’s these ads that have me looking at Android devices seriously. it’s the fact that they can’t be easily dismissed that bothers me the most (although clearly annoying even if they were quick to dismiss)
This is exactly the moment Elon has been expecting to launch his always connected phone, offer superb quality, with unique features at a price even higher than Apple and I know for sure it will make inroads in their market share. Give devs all the tools and the ecosystem will surpass both iOS and Android, just like Huawei is doing in China
Options is all we need, and tools to customize them. And just like Blackberry or Nokia, they will learn the hard way
I think he is busy launching typesafeai analog and chatgpt plugin market more. Anyway, why need phone if you have slave robot?
I've suffered the iCloud ads for almost 2 years at this point. You can't dismiss it, or if I can... the badge only disappears for a day and then it's back. I wish I could turn off iCloud completely, I have no use for it and do not want it. It sometimes hijacks files that I wanted to keep local-only.
Their damn hardware is so expensive, they should never pass an iota of a thought about putting ads in their software.
But Apple must enshittify all Apple products because it increases shareholder value. Else an activist shareholder will arise and accuse Ternus of dereliction of duty.
True, it’s short-term profits, but that’s all that matters. Nowadays.
Haven't those ads been there for years? Pretty sure I've seen them for years.
Yes and they are the most unobtrusive “ads” you could possibly imagine. This thread is weird. There’s even a guy in here shilling for an unreleased “Elon Phone”.
An article complaining about adds serving me add for their own service scrolling a page down.
Are you fucking kidding me
Apple must be trying to accelerate making smartphones as unappealing and contemptible as cable television in the past 10-15 years.
They've had ads for years. Try not upgrading to Tahoe and you'll get a popup every week advertising their new os
I set a do not disturb that runs 24x7 to turn that off
Whenever I see an ad in Apple Maps, I leave a bad review for the advertiser, specifically giving them a thumbs-down in customer service. They are making the service worse for me, the customer. I can dream that this would become common practice such that these ads get the reputation of providing negative value to the companies who buy them.
They urgently need to rip the ads out of the App Store and news, too. One of my "favorite" App Store ads[0] was straight out of a "DARE" program. Nothing like browsing through the store looking for a fun new game to fidget with and stumbling across a PSA that fentanyl can kill you. And Gruber was right[1] about the awful, awful ads in News. It's common to see five articles in a row, each packed with multiple copies of the exact same dumb ad for a young, pretty, AI-looking woman wearing hearing aids.
[0]https://honeypot.net/2023/12/21/one-pill-can.html
[1]https://daringfireball.net/2026/07/ads_on_apple_news_suck
They don’t care and will likely make your review hard to get to.
When you have willingly agreed to live your cyber life exclusively in the inside a golden jail, don't complain when the COs decide to collectively abuse you.
Yeah, I kept getting a notification about purchasing and extended warranty for my AirPods, which was annoying because it shows up in the same place as OS updates.
I don’t see them. Greetings from the EU.
I didn't realize they were ads.... this is weird
Maybe they're trying to train people to be OK with the red notification badge and just accept unread notifications as part of life.
Ads on Maps were inevitable. Google does it too. Those services just cost a ton of money to run. (I know the article talks about other ads too.)
can we all switch to gemini the protocol not the AI i cant even read this article how did we do this to ourselves
I literally couldn’t read this page because of the amount of ads.
Decent companies listen: I suggest contacting support; if enough people do it they might realize the errors in their ways.
I had a similar experience with promotional notifications from Hyundai: I suspect I'm not the only person who called their support saying, "I don't want ads from a $70,000 car."
I'll never forget when an employee at Samsung asked on their internal chat why the built in Weather app has ads, and they turned them off. https://www.androidauthority.com/samsung-remove-ads-2735914/
Ironically: https://imgur.com/a/xHyiUzW